What's New

12-31-2009
After an even longer time of not updating this site, I have decided to place a PayPal donation button on the front page of this site. Please note that donation is not, and never will be, necessary to play the Lords of Conquest Imitator. Also, I don't plan on charging for access to this game. I want this game to remain online and free forever.

9-2-2003
After a long time of not updating this site, I have decided to release Lords of Conquest v. 2003. I have received numerous emails commenting on the "trading bug", so I decided that it was worth it to finally fix it.

Bug Fixes:

• When I created the AI for Lords of Conquest, there was a bug in the trading phase, where sometimes two computer players would trade the same items back and forth forever. I thought that I had fixed it, but I hadn't. I believe I have fixed this bug, but just in case, I have also disallowed any player, human or computer, from proposing the same trade more than 3 times in any year, rejected or not.
• After one player gets eliminated (lost his last territory), sometimes, another player would get asked multiple times for Allies during subsequent battles. This is now fixed.

2-1-2001
Lords of Conquest v. 2001 is here! It contains numerous bug fixes and improvements over v. 2000. Coming soon: Screen shots will be added to the "How to Play" section.

Improvements:

• The Allies screen now lists current Force Count tallies to aid the user in making an informed Allies decision. The user can now see Allies decisions being made by computers when other computers attack.
• The Trade page where one decides what and how much to trade has been redone. There are now pulldowns below each resource label, and the trader can choose the amounts on both sides of the trade at once.
• The user can now Save a Map just after a map has been generated. You no longer have to wait for your first opportunity to click "Info" later on in the game.
• When deciding on a trade, the user can now click a new button labeled "Reject All From Player" to prevent the trader from proposing any more trades to you during the current year.
• When choosing a stockpile location after production, there was an extraneous "Cancel" button which did nothing. It is now gone.

Bug Fixes:

• In v. 2000, when computers are deciding their attacks, the game would freeze and it seemed like they were taking forever deciding their action. There was an uncaught Java Exception when it considered attacking an unchosen territory (colored black). This is now fixed.
• The "Info" button was sometimes not properly enabled during the Selection phase. It is now always available when a human player is selecting a territory.
• In v. 2000, it was possible for two computer players to trade the same items back and forth, and back and forth, forever. Now, two players can only execute the same trade a maximum of three times per year. The system no longer allows human players or computer players to propose the same trade a fourth time in the same year.

12-20-2000
I have changed the whole look of the site and included a bunch of new pages, including sections on How to Play, Help, and Loading/Saving a Map.

Here's a list of bugs/planned changes for the next version, 2001. There had to be a version 2001, you know the problems with ".0" releases! Or would that be "-000" releases?

• When a computer player is attacking, and asks for a human player's decision on Allies, the battle's Force Count is not currently displayed. I will include the Force Count on that screen.
• Sometimes the game freezes when it is the computer's turn for Conquest. If it takes more than 10-15 seconds to decide, then most likely the game has frozen. Hopefully in v. 2001 I will get to the bottom of this.
• The "Info" button is not currently enabled sometimes during Territory Selection. In v. 2001 it will always be Enabled when a it is a Human player's turn to select a territory.
• There is a useless, disabled "Cancel" button when initially locating a Stockpile, which will be eliminated in v. 2001.
• The Trade screen where a player decides what resources to trade will be overhauled in v. 2001 to make more intuitive sense. The "<" and ">" trade buttons will be replaced with pulldowns.
• In v. 2001 there will be an option to Save a Map before the game begins.
• In the Trade Acceptance screen, there will be a "Reject All From Player" button to prevent computer players from proposing potentially dozens of similar trades to you.
• Version 2000 currently has a bug in which 2 distinct computer players may occasionally execute the same 2 trades over and over again, until you kill the browser window. These 2 trades are "opposite" trades, in which one goes from state "A" to state "B" and the other returns to state "A". Version 2001 will prevent the same trade from being executed more than 3 times in a year.
• There have been some reports that after Territory Selection, the game continues on to Trade or Shipment without bothering with Production. It doesn't go through the normal process of skipping a phase with a "reason". I have not been able to confirm the existence of this bug.

11-19-2000
I am finally releasing Lords of Conquest version 2000! This version includes an AI, so the user can play against computer players. It also includes options for saving and loading maps, which are stored in text format. Soon, I will be changing the look of the Lords of Conquest page. It will no longer be just a history of my applet's development, but will also include sections for "Help" and "Instructions".

12-1-1999
Work on the AI for Lords of Conquest is in progress. In the mean time, I have placed a simple applet on this site which calculates the probability of success in a battle, given attack and defense values. The game link and the new Probability link both now open in separate windows.

9-29-1999
I am now releasing version 1.1 of Lords of Conquest. This version contains a few bug fixes and lots of improvements over version 1.0.

In Lords of Conquest version 2.000, which I hope to have on this site before the year 2000, there will be a computer player for one player games with an AI.

Bug fixes:

• If the user reaches the Generate Map page, doesn't generate a map, and uses the "Back" button, the "Next" button remains disabled until the user returns to the Players Page. This has been fixed.
• If the user Brings Forces and then clicks Allies, sometimes the Attack button was erroneously left disabled. This has been fixed.

Improvements:

• Before, the only way to Replan an attack was to click the "Replan" button. Now, as a convenience, the user may click the sea to replan.
• During Shipment and Bring Forces, the user may now click the boat directly instead of having to first click the territory the boat is docked at.
• During Shipment and Bring Forces, the user may now click on a horse/ weapon to pick them up, as well as use the checkboxes.
• Whenever stockpiles are listed, during Trade and Info, the boxes that display the stockpiles are now better lined up with the resource names.
• To view a player's stockpile, the user may now click on the player's name, as well as use the "<" and ">" buttons to cycle through the players.
• In 1.0, when the number of territories was not a multiple of the number of players, the extra territories were considered unoccupied, with a force count of 0. Now, these extra territories are occupied by "natives", each with a force count of 1. They are automatically neutral in all battles in which they are not being attacked, but they will defend themselves if attacked.
• During territory selection, the color used to ask the user to confirm selection was only slightly brighter than black. This color is now brighter to provide better contrast.
• When the user clicks the "Attack" button, there is now a delay indicating a battle. The territory flashes random colors during the battle. This flashing lasts longer when more forces are involved in the battle. Now there is a message indicating the battle's results: Succeeded/Failed.
• There is now an option to randomize the order of the players at the start of the game. Now, Red won't always be first, Yellow won't always be last, etc.
• Resources available for each option have been cut by one, and a new option, "Very Low", has been added. If there are n players, then the number of each of the resources ranges from n - 2 to n + 1.
• In addition to the above 4 options for resources, which are based on the number of players, there are now 4 additional options, which are based on the number of territories. These options also range from "Very Low" to "High", or 20% to 65%. Resources are added in this order (Tree, Gold, Horse, Iron, Coal) until the percentage is met.

9-8-1999
I am now releasing version 1.0 of Lords of Conquest the applet. This version contains numerous bug fixes and some improvements as well.

Bug Fixes and Improvements:

• If high resources was chosen along with two players and 20 territories, the Beta version would freeze. It would keep looking for an empty territory to place the 21st resource forever. The game would lock up. This combination (high resources, 20 territories) is now disallowed.
• Directions have been added on to several phases of the game in which the course of action is unclear. For example, during development, there is text indicating that locating the new development is necessary.
• In the lower left corner, where players' turn order is indicated, it is highlighted to provide better contrast. The same is done in numerous other places like when stockpiles or force counts are listed.
• The Irregular territory shapes feature has now been implemented. The 'Irregular' algorithm seems to take up much more space than the 'Regular' algorithm by creating tons of very small lakes which are added back to territories (as normal). To leave enough space, territory shapes may be smaller than the standard minimum of 9 squares per territory. They may be as small as 7 squares. But that's still enough space to handle the maximum number of items which may be present on the territory.
• The 'Cancel' button on the Conquest--Move Stockpile page was not functioning at all and now it is functioning correctly.
• A player may now win the game in a new way. In addition to winning the game by producing the required number of cities (3-8), the player may now conquer all territories to win the game.
• If a player is eliminated from the game (his last territory has been conquered), that player was still able to have turns. Even though an eliminated player could do nothing, other players could 'give' resources during trade, creating a need for a stockpile without a territory to place it on! Now, eliminated players are removed from the turn list and the above scenario can no longer happen.
• Immediately after a trade involving horses, the stockpile listing was not refreshed until the buttons were used to cycle through the players. Now the listings are immediately updated after any trade.
• The 'Next' button on the Generate Map page is now disabled until a map is generated. Before, the game allowed a game to start without a map!
• Players may now enter names for their color, to replace the color names seen by default.
• The 'Resource' bug in Netscape mentioned below actually applies when a resource file is searched for outside of a JAR (Java Archive) file. When I created the JAR file, Netscape succeeded in finding the correct file. Netscape users now can see the correct reasons why phases are skipped.

7-29-1999
Lords of Conquest the game was created in the 1980s by Eon Software. I decided to bring the game into the '90s by making it an applet. So I am now releasing the Beta version.

This version does not have music, nor does it allow the saving or loading of map files. But it does have more than 3 colors, and allows for not just 3, but up to 7 players. There is no one player version because there is no AI to this game. This game is not a networked game, that is, all players must huddle around one computer still. But now you can huddle anywhere around the world!

About the only specific thing about the game that doesn't work is the territory shapes, simply because I haven't implemented that feature yet. Territory shapes will always be 'regular'.

There is only one known bug so far.

• Netscape browsers that implement Java do not support the 'getResourceAsStream(String filename)' method. The InputStream that it is supposed to return is null. I use this method to obtain the list of reasons phases get skipped. So Netscape users will always see 'InputStream is null' as the reason a phase gets skipped. Strangely enough, this feature works fine in Internet Explorer browsers.

If you find an error or a bug in the game, please e-mail me at gettmanr.AT.yahoo.DOT.com.